I want to buy Baldur's Gate II: EE but I have questions
Yeah, I've never played any of the Baldur's Gate games and I really want to, due to the number of people still to this day, telling me how good the story and characters are.
Today, I played the first 20 of the demo for Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn and I thought the dialogue with Imoen was excellent even though I had no idea what the hell was going on... which leads me to my actual question:
Should I get Baldur's Gate 1 Enhanced Edition(If so, should I get it for the iPad) or can I just go straight into Baldur's Gate 2.
Also, can anyone give me tips on how I can enjoy the boring and primitive combat. I also found it extremely difficult even on lowest difficulty. Way too much enemies spawn, and the GUI is incredibly confusing(clearly I'll to do some research), so I wouldn't know how to heal.
Today, I played the first 20 of the demo for Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn and I thought the dialogue with Imoen was excellent even though I had no idea what the hell was going on... which leads me to my actual question:
Should I get Baldur's Gate 1 Enhanced Edition(If so, should I get it for the iPad) or can I just go straight into Baldur's Gate 2.
Also, can anyone give me tips on how I can enjoy the boring and primitive combat. I also found it extremely difficult even on lowest difficulty. Way too much enemies spawn, and the GUI is incredibly confusing(clearly I'll to do some research), so I wouldn't know how to heal.
0
Comments
As for the combat, try it a bit more before you call it primitive and boring. At first, it may seem very restrictive, but some of the higher-level fights get very tactical. That's where the fun comes from. Sure, at level one you're whacking people with your quarterstaff for ages, but that's *not* how it is even at level 3.
The combat system isn't really what I'd call primitive either. It's based on the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons pen and paper RPG. The sheer number of spells and abilities should keep it from being boring. There are also many different character builds to explore. You're not just a fighter or a mage, you've got lots of base classes, kits, multi-classes and dual-classes.
As for which version to get, I'd definitely go for the PC version but that's just me.
Can't help you on the tip for enjoyment, as I've not found it boring (though mayhap this is because I was a heavy player of it when it first came out and was reasonably revolutionary). Best I can say is to look on each combat as an exercise in strategy. Each one is winnable; you just have to change your tactics. My big mistake when I first started playing was to wade into every combat instead of having missles at the ready; to save potions instead of using them; to focus on spells like fireball or magic missles instead of less impressive but more generally useful spells like Sleep.
Good luck!
Man, you should play this games, they are hat changes the natures of the men.
I can help a little.
THAC0 and AC are better when lower.
Spells are memorized instead of consuming Mana like in other games, you have to sleep to re-memorize them.
Try using spells like "Hold" and "Chaos "in BG2:EE, for BG:EE just use "Sleep", read everything very carefullly, EVERYTHING, when I was new to this game I didn't knew a single word in english (I was 7 when I first tried the old original BG1), so I couldn't read so much, and I only passed the Prologue one time, now I am a very experienced player that cheeses a lot.
Don't buy this game. Both Baldurs Gate EE have bugs and the pace is soo slow in fixing them that you will regret it. Just look at BG1:EE it's still not fully patched since long time after release. BG2:EE is also having problems.
At first you will love enhancements and adore the beauty but once the bugs start to show their ugly face it's over.
Buy GOG versions and enjoy the most polished experience minus graphical immersion and the later isn't that important.
You shouldn't need to buy an outdated version of this game and install tweak/fix packs to make it work. The EE is a great product from a small developer that is committed to delivering a positive experience.
For the record, there are no game-breaking bugs in bg2:ee that I've found and I'm well into my second completionist play through. What bugs do exist are generally LESS than in the original and the support on these forums is quite active. More mods are being added to the already huge list and the ui improvements and tweaks make the GOG product look like a dinosaur. I would highly recommend the EE, and I have been a fan of these games since their original release.
I say give it a try- oh, and make sure to read the manuals
Don't misunderstand me, but why are you begging him to not play EE? If you say something like "I have made some bad experiences" that's OK, useful and your right, but begging him to net play it and go to GOG instead makes you sound like someone that just wants to advertise GOG -and that leaves a bad after taste in my mouth.
on topic:
I originally started with SoA when it came out, and after listening to the intro and the exposition dump via first talks (yay for amnesia ;-) ) I got most of the details.
The combat.. well, when I first played BG I was no fan and cheated massively, but when I started to play
BG:EE I wanted to play a mage myself and tried some non attack spells and the combat can be fun this way (like confuse all/ most of your enemies, use invisibility and look while they weaken and kill themselves =P)
Oh and don't worry to much about bugs, I finished SoA four times now, without any bug that reduces
my fun and the game is far from unplayable -especially nice to play if you played the original back when it came out and weren't much in the internet for most of the playtime.. damn was that experience buggy
EDIT: link - http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/27496/non-ee-version-cannot-leave-amekathran
See. That's the problem. The moment I say against EE all sorts of baseless accusations pop up. I paid for the game and now I have been blamed to advertise GOG as if they tried to build this palace of free drm games after it got popular by MY word of mouth.
Have I slapped the game BAD, PATHETIC OR USELESS instead it's a great game.
I am dissatisfied with the TEAM OF PEOPLE who made promises to deliver a bug free game in no time.
Are you getting it? Not the game but the team? ..Need more explanation?
@jackjack
Is that a threat? Where do you see in that link derailing the topic? I suggested him to go proper place for Non EE version rather asking here.
Grow some brains friend, all I got to say
It should come as no surprise to you that fans of this game don't like reading your insults of it, especially when you manage to insinuate that we're a bunch of fanboys and the developers don't know what they're doing. Take your own advice and go to a "proper place" for the non-EE version.
Lack of formation control and rotation was what completely put me off - especially since I bought the shiny 4th gen ipad just for BG after it didn't run on the old one.
I have kept my silence for past one year. You can check my join date and now when I played BG2:EE with bugs still showing up even after patching just could not stop myself for waiting so long firstly it was BG1:EE and now it's BG2:EE.
I don't want to start a topic and beg them to deliver and take the insult with another promise.
My Questions are:
1. How long will it take to patch the games, make mods compatible?
2. Don't forget BG1:EE still has some probpems are player requested changes. So, how much delay will that be?
I need some assurance, date or some time to understand the progress of the Team.
3. Why is it hard for the Team to support BG2 fixpacks as supplementary patch fix till they sort it out with the core game? This is really beyond understanding since that could buy them more time and the players can play EE with that polish feel.
Before making the mods compatible they should make BG2 Fixpacks compatible for quick solution.
That's why I still recommend GOG.
1.The Devs don't make mods compatible, the modders do. Mods are -per definition- 3rd party contributions and thus the devs are not allowed to work with them. Back then Gaider mentioned it multiple times in his own mod that people should not even ASK about UB (or Ascension) on the official forum, let alone demand that Bioware fixes any compatibility problems with their product, so why should Beamdog do that? I'm not even sure they are legally allowed to even officially acknowledge them.
2.
rant in spoiler tags:
more unpopular =P). It had bugs after 12 years of development and bugfixing. So, Beamdog has to fix those bugs, including those fixed by 3rd party mods since they are still not allowed to just copy them,
then they have made changes and additions, which could create new problems. every change can result in a bug, including bugfixing. Long story short: 1. It will never be perfect. 2. They need to patch before they can patch the patch.
Aside from literally gamebreaking bugs (which are fixed afaik) they don't NEED to fix it, but they do
and they are very active here to talk about it, so I feel it is safe to assume that you have the relevant info they CAN give. But should you really mean "changes"..they are up to them and how can anyone DEMAND that the game is changed for him? asking or giving ideas is great but saying they suck because they don't follow your (not you personally) whim is the mindset of an 8-year old child.
3. They tried to add every Bugfix they could. they changed part of the structure so 3rd-party stuff needs to be adjusted to work. The complete compatibility you are wanting would mean that you DON'T change the game.. which would mean that EE would be a lie, I hope you see the problem.
And about my last post.. I said you could give your opinion, I just criticised your wording.
It sounded it "This game is garbage, get this one instead" and I have the opinion you should have said "I dislike this Version/Game because of this and this". It is all about wording, words are important after all
1) We're patching both games steadily. A month or so ago we released patch 1.2, which contained over 600 improvements, new features, and bug fixes. A week after BGII:EE was released we put out a patch for that as well. We'll probably release another patch before we break for the holidays.
2) Feature requests don't have a set timeline, and part of that is because most of our focus is on resolving the issues with the game itself. It does no good, for example, to add subraces to the game (a common request) when the journal screen still needs work to be usable (a common complaint).
3) Fixpacks are available in the form of hot-fixes. Generally speaking, if you look in the Bugs forums for your issue, if it's been fixed there will probably be a hot-fix sitting there in the thread. We could probably be better about collecting these fixes together so people can get them when they need them. Not everything has a hot-fix, and part of that is because in the time it would take to create hot-fixes for all of the issues we plan to resolve in a given patch, we could just release the patch itself.
There's another question there that I'm a little confused about, and maybe it's just because I'm out of the loop (it's been known to happen on occasion, I make no apologies about that): the BG2 Fixpack should be compatible already; have you tried installing it?
But that being said--and there's no friendly way to say this--mods are not our responsibility. A lot of the team are modders, and they're starting work on updating old mods to work with the Enhanced Edition, but that work exists outside of Beamdog and what our mission is. So if there's a mod you want to see made compatible, go find the author of that mod and let them know you want that to happen.
So. You're unhappy with the game. Or, more specifically, you're happy with the game but you're unhappy with the team that developed it. That's okay; we'll be the first to admit that there were some things we could have done better, and we're striving to make those changes. You still prefer the original game. That's okay too; a lot of people do, for a variety of reasons. Quartz likes the original because we backported the kits from BGII. Shawne likes the original because Ascension isn't updated for the EE yet. There's a contingent of people who like the original because they don't like the new characters. And that's all okay.
We've got people on these boards who haven't even played the game, or who played the original but have never even considered buying the enhanced edition. We don't turn those people away at the door. The people that get turned away are the ones who start attacking other members of the community, trolling and derailing threads that were just asking for information, redirecting every conversation to a tirade against what is otherwise a fairly level-headed community. So the question I'm going to have you ask yourself is this:
When you post that the game's developers have broken promises, that people will regret buying the enhanced edition, that people should go to GOG and buy the original games, that the people on these forums love the bugs... Are you trying to offer helpful information to someone who's trying to make an informed decision? Or are you trying to insult the other people that are posting?
If it's the former, then that's great, that's awesome, that's the point of a message board, exchanging ideas so that everyone leaves a little bit smarter. If it's the latter, if your only purpose in posting is to attack people, then as the saying goes, there's the door.
I don't think that's what you were doing. At least I like to think that's not what you were doing. There's a lot of people with legitimate claims against these games, and in a thread where someone's asking whether or not they should buy them, you're totally right to post them here.
But going forward--and this goes for everyone, and I mean that, because right after shrekdj's post I saw several hurtful comments that were totally unwarranted--if you think you're about to post something not because it's helpful but because you want to hurt somebody with your words, STOP. Don't post it. Think about more constructive ways to spend your time.
Is that acceptable? Can we all get on board with that? Good.
@charstringssuck
The company line, obviously, is "Buy them both, and then buy copies for all your friends, and then buy copies for your congressmen as well". We like being able to pay our rent.
If you want my honest opinion, if you want to get hooked, you could start with Baldur's Gate II and never give the first game a second glance. The game is that good. And that's not to say that the first game isn't also great, because it is, but it's a little slower going, the characters aren't as fully developed, and the villains aren't as ever-present like they are in the second game. If I had to choose to play only one of the two games, I'd choose BGII every time.
On the other hand, if you know you'll want to play the second game at some point anyway, and you know you'll want to play the first game at some point anyway, I would definitely start with the first game. It lays some great foundations for the characters in the second game that will only enhance the experience for you. And because it's a little less deep in terms of characters, because it's a little more open in terms of the size of the world, you can spend your time exploring and getting used to the mechanics, so that when you hit BGII you'll already be prepared to handle everything that comes your way, so that you can really pay attention to the story instead of worrying about whether or not you've got the right spells memorized.
You are making up here on my very straightforward points. In fact replacing my words with Sucks, garbage, etc..
When did I say that?
Either this forum has more new players to this game or are just plain kids with no maturity how to address a post when one complaints.
Not a single Mod Team has responded yet and neither in the past, that's very cool of them, right?
I understand about Mods that's why I suggested to make only one thing compatible - The Fixpacks.
Both games have core game in common so where is the problem in implementing it?
How come the Mod Team skip to verify or try it out?
Firstly my last post (To Arcanis) was made before reading yours so don't take me wrong.
Now, that I read your post I am glad to have an ANSWER waiting all this time for. No one put this as simple as you did.
Yes, I asked one of the Beta Team member here about BG2 Fixpacks and SHE (won't take name) said that it's not required to install as (don't remember exact words) it's included or makes it irrelevant.
Thank you for the feedback
You may find issues with installing it because parts of it have been applied already, but it shouldn't really break anything.
@charstringssuck @Dee
I say Dee is right. Story-wise BG2 is better imho, because of the Banter. The actual story isn't bad,
but -sorry to all Baldurs Gate fans- not really THAT great. I think the game has two really great things:
The Combat, if you are into strategic combat with a lot of room for different possible methods, and the one that good me hooked: the characters.
-WARNING everything that follows is my personal opinion and NOT a scientific analysis-
BG1 had only one really fleshed out character (Sarevok) while BG2 has waay more.
Irenicus is fleshed out like Sarevok, but thanks to the Banters your allies have personality.
I.e. Jans Jansen.. you are either annoyed by him or you like him. REGARDLESS of his stats.
But in BG1 stats are everything. or an EE char: Neera either you love her or you love her even more (told you it is biased =P) - you can play BG2 for the characters. I have replayed this game so often, to the point where I memorised every cutscene. But the characters still draw me back.
So, all in all? Play BG2 for the characters and you will have fun. Even if you say: I HATE Edwin!
because you really do, than the devs made a great job, because there is something to hate.
But in BG1? he is awesome, great stats, 2nd most spells out of all NPC's. His Alignment is of no matter.
Sorry if I rambled a bit, but I hope you understand what I'm getting at ^^
And before anyone accuses me of belittling BG2: That game is my favourite game!
(Tho the combat could have been a bit less.. please add more quests were you can avoid combat ^_^)
The first chat with Imoen got me hooked, and I'm going to buy Baldur's Gate 1 and do a quick run through the game. (I'm only interested in this dialogue).
However, I'm been doing some searching. Apparently, there is a romance mod for Imoen on blindmonkey.
I've been getting errors trying to extract it into my root directory of Baldur's gate 2 enhanced edition.
Is the mod not compatible with the enhanced edition? Should I buy Baldur's Gate 2 Complete on GOG if it will make my life easier?
Also.. while the mod is pretty good I'm not sure you want to do it directly. Play the game first and
enjoy the "old" romances. (you might like the Neera one if you like Imoen, but Aerie is nice too, the
other have a muuuch different focus.) And while the plot-twist is handled pretty good in the mod I think you should know about it before playing it.
And again, the ToB part isn't done so you have looots of time till you play the mod =P
So, compability shouldn't really be an issue, tho I must admit Imoen is cute.. and I was looking forward to it when GameStar claimed that you could romance her (and Jaheira) 13 years ago xD
The PC price is higher, cuz they are in that version (since you have little reason to buy it without them)
they are not an afterthought but the highlight. Beamdog hold back with Rasaad & Co because the others
don't have any Banters, but everyone comes with some talk and a new Quest. They also have "Proto-romances", meaning you can flirt a bit, start a (weak) relationship and so on but the main stuff is in BG2, since it would be waay out of place in part 1
I hope you enjoy it
So I bought them both (on PC) and blasted through the first game and now I'm working my way through the second. I would definitely agree that it's worth getting both games. The first game sets the scene nicely for the second. It's also nice (I'm typing that through clenched teeth) to endure the difficulty of the beginning of the first game in order to become more powerful, and then (hopefully) Godlike in the second game. Also, the ability to export your BG1 character into BG2 gives a real sense of continuity.
So, I would also recommend doing the first game, although it looks like that's what you've done anyway - I'm sure you won't regret it.